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Why "Gay" Spirituality?

The word
"spirituality" has a variety of meanings.
One of the important meanings is "technique." That is, spiritualities
are techniques and methods of religious practice that aim at altering
and transforming human personality in order to achieve harmony with
"God."

In that sense, spiritualities are like artistic media: pastel,
watercolor, oil, acrylic, collage, etc. These are not at odds with one
another. They simply have different effects. And different artists are
drawn to and talented in the various different media. In that sense,
then, they represent different ways of "spirit" manifesting itself in
time and space.

Different people respond to different
spiritualities.
Women, for instance, would be particularly resonant to ideas about time
and change, to images of the moon, to fluctuations in feelings, and the
cyclic flow of life. These are manifestations in consciousness of the
dynamics of menstruation.

Heterosexual men are particularly resonant to
ideas
about
conquest, strength, competition, winning the race. These flow out of
the heterosexual male mind. They reflect men's experience of sex.

Gay men respond to ideas and images of beauty
and
pleasure.
Gay men are less likely to feel comfortable with competition.

Christianity has a particularly straight male
predominance
in its spirituality and imagery. The "saint" denies his feelings,
strives to conquer himself, to compete with other men to be right in
his thinking about divine truth, pushes himself to achieve the goal of
afterlife in heaven, does not succumb to the temptations of beauty and
pleasure.

A "gay spirituality" then might seem
inconsistent
with the
mainstream methods of Christianity. Gay consciousness does not focus as
much on duality and conflict, on self-control and subjugation of
feelings, on reproduction of offspring and responsibility to future
generations.

These aren't at odds with each other, anymore
than
oil
painting with pastel. But they ARE different.

In fact, the male dominant tendency to see
competition in
difference causes the Christian male-dominated worldview to interpret
homosexuality and gay consciousness as a threat.

One of the major contributions to the evolution
of
consciousness that gay identity offers is the vision of different
perspectives. Straight people would do well to learn that the so-called
"straight perspective" is just one possibile way of viewing the world.
And traditionally this perspective has caused an awful lot of the
suffering and "evil" in the world. Indeed, one might argue that the
teachings of Jesus were really all about getting beyond those male
dominant ideas about competition and conquest, replacing them with
feelings of compassion, sympathy, and love.

The answer then to "why gay spirituality?" is
that
gay
traits in consciousness result in gay people's seeing the world--and
God--differently. Gay people (and gay men are different from lesbians
in this regard) need gay spiritual images to resonate with in their
spiritual unfolding.

We need a God who isn't patriarchal and
demanding--like
a
straight male boss--or rule giving, but is loving and maternal. We need
a God who isn't so concerned with reproducing offspring and keeping
procreation in control for the sake of genetic purity, and who IS
concerned about the beauty of the world and the pleasure that
embodiment can proffer.

Why gay spirituality? For all gay people, by virtue of being aware of
being gay (men perhaps a little more than women), being gay is THE most
significant thing about who one is. Whether one is happy with it or
not, that one is gay colors every experience. You're always aware of
it. Nobody ever forgets they're gay. Since that is such a major aspect
of our consciousness, our religious and spiritual experiences should
arise out of that context in such a way as to improve and enhance our
experience of life.

Our spiritual practice should arise from our gayness. Our spiritual
wisdom--our understanding of the world and of the meaning and purpose
of life--should arise from our gayness. Because, in fact, it does,
whether we know it or acknowledge it.

Homosexuality is a kind of religious vocation, a "calling," that seems
impossible not to answer to. In the mythic terms of religion, this
calling is the voice of God telling you who you should love and bond
with, your soul showing you how to follow your destiny.

To not understand one's homosexuality as a religious experience is to
miss the best part of it. Our homosexuality is the eye with which we
see God. And, in Meister
Eckhart's famous aphorism, "the eye with which I see God is the eye
with which God sees me." That is, how we deal with our homosexuality is
how God will see us. That we transform our homosexuality into something
life-affirming, life- and love-fulfilling, participating, contributing
to the evolution of human consciousness is how we "prove ourselves to
God."

Toby Johnson, PhDis
author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of
his
teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and
religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual
issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's
spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor
of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.

Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.

FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.